A couple of months ago, I wrote a post on the APRS "scene" in southwestern MN. A few things have changed since then, and I have some additional information from a local in the area.
First, let's look at a map of the typical APRS infrastructure in the area:
 |
| Southwestern MN APRS infrastructure |
As always, click on these images to enlarge them.
Currently, the big MTLAKE TX gateway in Mountain Lake is down. Per the operator (NG0E Jon), it should be restored in a week or less. While MTLAKE has excellent coverage, and offers the only RF-based messaging for the area, it goes off-air for a week or more about four times a year.
EDIT: MTLAKE came back in service the evening of 6/20/23.
That's why I was pleased when I saw the KD0BXJ-3 TX gateway come on-line back in April. Located in Windom, it seemed natural that it could provide some backup when MTLAKE inevitably took a break. Unfortunately, this Windom gateway ran into trouble a month ago and never recovered. It's still connected to the APRS-IS servers, but no longer gates any traffic.
So... there's still that RX-only gateway in Tyler, right? Nope. KB0NLY-2 has also been down for over a month now. And it doesn't even have an -IS connection, like KB0BXJ-3 does. But this is typical for the Tyler gateway. It's become very unreliable over the past few years.
There is no functional I-Gate in south-west MN at all right now. Digipeated packets from the Chandler, Tracy and Fairmont stations are gated in South Dakota, Faribault, and St. Cloud.
Still, what infrastructure that remains seems to working better than it has in the past, surprisingly.
The Fairmont digipeater, KC0KOZ-2, has struggled for at least two years now. It usually only handles stations within five miles of its location. This month, however, it's showing a 25-mile coverage radius, going along I-90 and south into Iowa.
 |
| Fairmont digi coverage 6/16/23 |
The area still needs a gateway in Blue Earth to cover more of I-90 (and serve as a backup), but KC0KOZ-2 seems to be doing reasonably well right now.
Perhaps impacted by the loss of the MTLAKE gateway, the W0DRK-2 digipeater near Tracy, MN seems to be handling less traffic than usual. It still has pretty powerful TX, though, and is capable of passing traffic (including messaging) to St. Cloud or even the metro. A modest RX-only gateway in Marshall could make this station significantly more valuable to the community.
 |
| Current W0DRK-2 coverage |
It was fairly exciting for me to see the coverage and traffic data from the Chandler, MN digipeater, however. KD0MC-2 is doing a heck of a job covering I-90 for travelers, and the surrounding areas, as well.
 |
| Current KD0MC-2 coverage |
Bear in mind we are only midway through the month, so this map could still show further improvement than we see here. As you can see, solid coverage to the north ends at Marshall. This is yet another reason for having an I-Gate there, to consolidate coverage and provide some redundancy in the network.
The current map for the Chandler digi was so interesting that I dug up the contact for the station to find out if any improvements had been made. KD0BJW (Arl) got back to my email promptly, and had some interesting information to share.
First, both the Chandler and Tyler digipeaters are run by the same club -- the Murray County Amateur Radio Club (MCARC). It's refreshing to see a club take such strong interest in APRS, and to run two stations. It would be nice if the club in Worthington took MCARC's example to heart and set up a modest gateway to handle that local packet traffic.
Second, Arl said that nothing had changed on either of these two stations to his knowledge. This means that local APRS activity must be increasing considerably. With the Chandler digi having a solid hold on traffic from Faribault, Paynesville, Mankato, Granite Falls, and Green Isle, a local operator on RF within range of KD0MC-2 can do pretty well. RF-based messaging can reach about 1/4 of the state in EmComm situations -- or just having some fun on #aprsthursday. And that's direct comms, without a gateway.
Summary
I'm still hopeful that the infrastructure in southwestern MN will stabilize, and even grow. There seems to be a demand, and such a demand usually prompts local operators to establish their own small-scale gateways to better leverage the available infrastructure.
With the current array of hardware and software solutions, it's not particularly challenging to set up at least an RX-only APRS gateway. An old analog scanner can be run into an obsolete laptop running APRS client software or a sound-card modem, for example. A Mobilinkd TNC can plug into a spare HT or cheap Chinese mobile rig, and Bluetooth it to an old tablet/laptop. There are simple options beyond big towers and expensive TNCs.
No comments:
Post a Comment